An educator's guide to sustainability with young learners

What’s so green about a yellow museum?

The Brooklyn Children’s Museum (BCM) was founded in 1899, making it the oldest dedicated children’s museum in the world. At the time, it lived in an old mansion. By the second half of the 20th century, BCM had a great new building, mostly subterranean as you can see in the picture above. But it just wasn’t big enough!

Totally Tots

In 2008, the museum re-opened with double its original space. New features included a wonderful and enormous early childhood play area (Totally Tots), a series of play stores showing ethnic and cultural diversity in Brooklyn (World Brooklyn), indoor biomes representing natural habitats in Brooklyn (Neighborhood Nature), space to show off the amazing objects owned by BCM (Collections Central), a fabulous greenhouse and garden, and a Science Inquiry Center.

World Brooklyn, click for teacher and family resources

These exhibits are awesome, but that’s not all. The choice was made to re-open BCM in a LEED-certified building. LEED certification is a process run by the US Green Building Council, designed to highlight sustainable buildings. The end result is a beautiful looking building with some great sustainable features.

… and that’s a subject for another post. Check back soon for information on just what BCM did to be sustainable and information about new museum exhibits designed to explain these concepts to children.